


recursion

by meng_ren



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 23:19:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7335049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meng_ren/pseuds/meng_ren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The team, all seven of them, had worked for years to protect the weak and defenseless. Now they need to protect one of their own.</p><p>[Leverage!AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	recursion

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [InfiniteRarepairFicathon2016](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/InfiniteRarepairFicathon2016) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
> 
> (Any Pairings) Something based on this au, please: http://41days.org/post/138341468586/inspiritsnet-prompts-non-idolau-leverageau
> 
> INFINITE as a team consists of several people who use their skills to fight corporate and governmental injustices inflicted on ordinary citizens.
> 
> The Mastermind: Sunggyu  
> The Hacker:  
> The Grifters: Woohyun & Myungsoo  
> The Hitters: Dongwoo & Hoya  
> The Thief: Sungjong

\---------

It was the screams that finally convinced Sunggyu to take the mission.

Sunggyu had known for a while that something, something, had occurred at the Injwa Academy. Sungjong, Myungsoo, and Sungyeol were children when they were raised there, and it was clear to Sunggyu that what happened to the trio was something Sunggyu would never experience or wish on even his worst enemies. Something happened to Sungjong, and that something had the tendency of causing the maknae to wake up in the middle of the night, screaming.

Sungjong’s night terrors had largely ceased after their team had been formed. That didn’t bring Sungjong any closer to the rest of the team, though. No matter their mission, Sungjong always remained remarkably resistant to any sort of close personal friendships. He was, as a member of the team, efficient and professional, and Sunggyu knew he would never find a better lockpicker or safecracker. But Sungjong was not his friend, preferring always the company of the other members of the trio.

The screaming resumed when the team first started working in the city of Eunsan. Myungsoo and Sungyeol had asked Sunggyu repeatedly that the team not be sent there. They had told Sunggyu that there were still plenty of marks in their adopted hometown of Gocheon. Despite three years of running missions exposing the crooked, the thieves, and the dishonest, Gocheon had only marginally improved. But Sunggyu was wary after yet another mission where both Woohyun and Myungsoo had been kidnapped.

“We’re going to beat the heat,” Sunggyu had informed the team after that mission, while a concerned Sungjong tended to Myungsoo’s injured arm.

“How?” Woohyun, always the first to challenge his suggestions, had responded immediately.

“We’re going to leave,” Sunggyu said, matter of factly, and almost all of the members agreed. Myungsoo, stubborn but not usually insubordinate, had resisted, trying to argue that what happened to him was not grounds for abandoning their mission.

“For where?” And it was Howon speaking, always probing Sunggyu and challenging him, regardless of whether he agreed with their leader.

“Eunsan. It’s a large city, and we’ve never tried to catch any marks there,” Sunggyu responded. “It’s also far away from Gocheon. The Min crime family isn’t likely to try to go after us while their top members are still in jail. Once they’re released, we’ll need to go back to Gocheon and take care of them for once and for all. But for now, let’s run our operations in Eunsan instead.”

Myungsoo and Sungyeol, Sungjong’s loyal friends, had opposed the move to Eunsan. They suggested other towns, other cities, but Sunggyu all rejected the choices for being either too small or too close to Gocheon. One night, when Sunggyu was the only one up and most of the team was asleep, Myungsoo and Sungyeol asked Sunggyu to change his mind. The reason they cited was Injwa Academy. Sunggyu asked them why this was an adequate reason, and the two of them had only mumbled that their childhood at that school was a traumatic one. Sungjong, they warned, went through the worst experience there, out of all of them, experiencing things even Sungyeol and Myungsoo dreaded.

Sunggyu asked Sungjong later, personally, whether the maknae would be okay with returning to Eunsan, Injwa Academy and all. The maknae was adamant that, as a matter of fact, he could return to his hometown without any repercussions.

Sungjong was wrong, and the screams proved it.

It was the first week that the team had returned to Eunsan, and it was one of the rare nights that neither Sungyeol nor Myungsoo was present at home. He had sent Sungyeol to break into a local politician’s mansion, while Myungsoo went undercover at a nightclub, working as a grifter to elicit information.

When Sunggyu first heard the screams, ones that he had not heard in years, he burst into the maknae line’s room, where he saw Sungjong, lying on his side, screaming into a pillow. Sunggyu could not tell if Sungjong was conscious or not, but could hear the younger man yelling “Teacher, I’m sorry!” into his pillow every other second.

While Woohyun and Dongwoo entered the room behind him, Sunggyu rushed over to wake Sungjong up, and in the process Sungjong managed to put an elbow against Sunggyu’s ribs. The leader tumbled back two steps, while Dongwoo and Woohyun managed to get on both sides of Sungjong and shake the man awake. Sungjong was completely unaware of what had happened, but he realized within a matter of seconds from his panted breaths and sweat-drenched clothing.

“I had a nightmare,” he said, quickly trying to recover, and not looking any of the other team members in the eye. Sunggyu glanced first at Dongwoo, then Woohyun, and then Howon, who by then had popped into the room to see what had happened. Sunggyu slowly nodded his head at all of them, leaving just him and Sungjong present in the room.

“That was some nightmare,” replied Sunggyu. “It sounded terrifying to you. Are you sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” snapped Sungjong, visibly irritated. “It’s happened to me before.”

“But not when Sungyeol and Myungsoo are here. Is that what this is about?” Sunggyu said, hesitating. Clearly Sungjong was dealing with a sensitive topic, and Sunggyu suspected the involvement of the Injwa Academy.

“It’s better when they’re here, sure,” replied Sungjong, getting out of bed to grab a new set of pajamas. “Could you excuse me? I need to go back to sleep.”

Sunggyu got to his feet, trying to put concern into his voice even as he spoke critically. “Of course. But I don’t want this to happen again. It affects all of us, just like when it happened years ago. If this keeps happening, especially if Myungsoo and Sungyeol are here with you, I’ll need to do something.”

Sungjong only gave a grumpy nod as he escorted the leader out of the bedroom.

\---------

The screams, of course, did not end there.

The second time, Myungsoo was present. The third time, Sungyeol. By the fourth, fifth, and sixth times, Sungyeol and Myungsoo were pulled off of night-time missions because they had to stay behind and comfort the maknae. It grew to the point that Sunggyu knew he had to take some action.

He went to his customary first source of information: Woohyun.

“So what is maknae line’s deal with Injwa Academy? And Sungjong?” Sunggyu asked. He was seated at the kitchen table, pouring alcohol for the younger man.

Woohyun, the team’s other grifter, grabbed the cup and downed it in one gulp before answering.

“It’s pretty fucked up,” Woohyun said. “It was a school for children who had no parents. Orphans, those abandoned by their parents, and occasionally kids who were removed from their parents custody.”

“I know Sungjong has no parents. What about it?”

“It was the abuse. Physical, verbal, emotional, sexual, you name it. If you had a pulse you were a target,” Woohyun responded.

“Did anything ever happen with the school?”

“Yes. Many of the teachers and administrators there were arrested. A few of them were convicted for sexual abuse, but nobody served more than two years in jail. The principal of the school was sentenced to ten years but was released on medical parole after six months. The school was later shut down.”

“Nobody knew what was going on?” Sunggyu was feeling sick. His marks, his targets, were no saints. They were men who separated hard-working, innocent folks from their money. Occasionally, Sunggyu and the crew occasionally stumbled into a murder investigation. But extended patterns of sexual violence far exceeded what Sunggyu was used to doing.

“Are you kidding? Of course everybody knew what was happening in the school. The police, the prosecutors, and the local bureaucrats all turned a blind eye. The Injwa Academy took in the worst of the worst: the bastard children and the orphans that the local government didn’t want seen in public. It relieved the strain on the public school system by sending them to a private school. And even if you disagreed with that idea, the Academy and its principal had too much money and too many friends for you to do anything about it,” Woohyun said, and Sunggyu realized the other man was just as angry as he was.

“Are any of the people responsible, the ones who were in charge of the school, still alive?”

Woohyun shook his head. “The principal died two months ago. And all of the teachers who were convicted? They were low on the totem pole.”

Sunggyu was silent, thinking for just a second. And then he stood up to leave. But before he exited the kitchen he gave Woohyun a small bow. “Thanks for telling me.”

“What about it?”

“I know who our next marks are going to be.”

\---------

Sunggyu didn’t bring up the marks with Woohyun. The other man was too passionate, too aware of the situation, to tell Sunggyu whether the mission was objectively a good one or a bad one.

So he went to Dongwoo, the second oldest member of their crew, and explained everything that he had researched about Injwa Academy.

Mostly, he explained how the Academy had survived for so long.

“These three people,” Sunggyu explained, handing Dongwoo the three files, "include the person most responsible for covering up the sins, the person who benefited the most, and the person responsible to Sungjong.”

Dongwoo flipped through the files, his eyes settling on the pages for several minutes at a time, and he pursed his lips.

“These people,” he said, his voice frequently trailing. “They’re big names in national politics. These marks are some of the biggest that we’ve gone after.”

“I know.”

“It’s not like the marks we used to go after. Back then, even if everything messed up, we could rest assured that our marks wouldn’t go to the law and chase after us. But these three. They are the law.”

“I also know that.”

“These aren’t minor figures, Sunggyu. They’re people that I have heard about and I know about, even if I don’t follow politics like you or Woohyun.”

“Dongwoo, these aren’t the crooks we normally deal with. But without them, we would never need to deal with our marks. We’re only attacking weeds while corrupt officials allow them to grow.”

Dongwoo was silent, flipping through the pages of the files, again and again.

“And Sungjong?”

“Two of these people benefited from Injwa Academy, and the third personally benefited from what happened to Sungjong.”

“Our maknae went through all of that, because of what these three knew and did?”

“Yes.”

Dongwoo handed Sunggyu the files back. “I want you to ask the maknae line about this. But even though this is the biggest mission we’ve taken, I want you to know I agree with it. Who else is on board?”

“If you agree, Woohyun will. And Howon? He usually agrees with me. We just need to get the maknae line.”

\---------

Woohyun and Howon agreed, as Sunggyu expected. He talked to Sungjong next, carefully broaching the subject, making it completely clear that he wanted Sungjong to do his best in the upcoming mission, even if Sungjong was the reason for the mission.

The maknae gave his hot-tempered, repeated assurances that he would not let the team down, and that he had never let the team down.

And that left Sungyeol and Myungsoo, the two men he thought were most reluctant to go along with the idea.

And they agree, totally and wholly. And when Sunggyu asked if they weren’t able to do their job as effectively as they could in other missions. The two denied it. As far as they knew, they would do their job better. The two explained that even if they didn’t go through what Sungjong did, Injwa Academy did them wrong. They too would be able to work.

And they also noticed the screams were growing worse.

\---------

And it lead to this day, as Sunggyu stood in front of the slideshow projector as he explained their next mission. His eyes first looked towards the hitters, Dongwoo and Howon, who were leaning against both ends of the couch in the living room. He turned next towards the grifters, Woohyun and Myungsoo, seated on the separate ends of the couch. Sungyeol was in a separate armchair. Sungjong took the spot in the middle of the couch, leaning into Myungsoo’s shoulders.

“We have a new mission, starting today, which I’ve told all of you in bits and pieces,” Sunggyu started. “Our mission is to take down the three officials in the Eunsan city government who protected Injwa Academy during the years it was operational. Here they are.”

Sunggyu clicked his remote three times to project the three targets:

_(1) Eunsan’s National Assembly Representative_  
_(2) Eunsan’s mayor_  
_(3) Eunsan’s chief prosecutor_

“These three people are Eunsan’s most powerful officials,” Sunggyu explained. “And we are going to bring them all down.”

**Author's Note:**

> A few things I must admit: I posted the story so the beginning would be up by the time the Ficathon ends. I have no idea where I'm going with this story, or when I'll have time to even complete this story, especially when I have other ideas I want to work on. I promise I'll try to work on this story, but this project will have the lowest priority out of all of my works.


End file.
